the scars that mark my body they're silver and gold
by edeabeth
Summary: "These are like battle scars, you know?" His expression is so tortured it burns her. She swallows a sob. "They represent all your pain. Everything you feel is marking you, but it's time to stop." (four moments)
1. Chapter 1

_._

_(Screwed up, scared, doing anything that I needed.)_

(Gods and Monsters-Lana Del Ray)

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Violet stands in the pouring rain, imagining that she's drowning. It's nice to submerge herself in something other than her own thoughts and all she wants to do is open up her mouth and scream. Something prickles her skin and she's unable to come to grips with herself. The sky is a dreadful heavy grey that looks like velvet, thick purple clouds growing darker as day melts into night and the rain just keeps pouring. The yard to the house has become something almost soupy, the mud so thick.

"It's been raining for days." Tate states blandly from behind her, leaning over the rail of the house to run his fingers over her arm. His touch is oddly warm, and all she can do is stand stupidly and shiver. "It'll have to stop, you know. Only so much the sky can do before it has to stop."

She doesn't know if she's even crying, or if it's just the rain against her cheeks. Her eyes sting though, so she imagines she might be crying despite her best fist clenching efforts. "Go away."

The driveway is empty and the house is even emptier seemingly. Moira isn't even dusting down the shelves, leaving Violet to roam the halls alone and fade through the rooms.

There's something horribly wrong with her, but she doesn't even care. Violet feels so many thoughts and emotions knotted up within her, catching at her lungs and her heart until it's to the point that simply existing burns. Everything feels like a cage to her, like iron bars are tight around her chest.

Her wrists burn and ache, she realizes, with the angry slashes of healing crimson. She glares hard at the paleness of her skin before savagely clawing at her left wrist with her nails and sobbing at the pain.

Tate vaults over top of the rail neatly and grabs her roughly. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like?" Her hair is plastered to her face and he pushes it out of her eyes almost gently. There's a dark pain glittering in his black eyes, and she wants to hurl herself away from him but his grip seems unbreakable. "Get off of me."

He pulls her up the porch steps and opens the door for her, escorting her into the house. She's dripping wet and he's no better but neither of them really seems to notice. Tate pulls her up the stairwell quietly with her hand tiny in his own. "You're going to get sick." He informs her as he leads her into the bathroom, her feet bare on the floor tiles.

Violet flinches at the sight of her reflection, all large eyed and pale faced. She wants to break the glass, slamming her fist and breaking apart her very image. Tate doesn't give her the option, throwing a white fluffy towel over her head and rubbing at her hair roughly. "You're hurting me." She protests weakly, trembling from the coldness that had settled around her such a long time ago. "Just go away, Tate."

Suddenly his attempts at drying her off seem more soft and soothing, the towel slipping down over her shoulders and forcing her to step closer to the taller boy as she tilted her head back. "I'm not going away." He tells her quietly, and it sounds like a promise. His arms slip around her and they feel unbreakable, forcing her closer and closer to him. "I'm not ever going to go away. You're hurting right now, Violet. I know that, and I care. I'm not going to let you hurt like this."

Violet bites her lip as she presses her forehead against his shoulder. "I feel so cold all the time. It hurts, Tate."

"Will you let me help?"

She doesn't answer but she also doesn't have to.

He leaves her perched on the edge of the bathtub and returns with a few articles of her clothing folded neatly in his hands. "You're going to get sick if you don't get out of those." He tells her as he slowly unbuttons each of the buttons on her soaking wet black shirt that's plastered to her skin. Tate carefully peels the fabric off, kneeling down to sit before her. She flinches when he takes her hands and runs his lips over each livid cut. "These are like battle scars, you know?" His expression is so tortured it burns her. She swallows a sob. "They represent all your pain. Everything you feel is marking you, but it's time to stop."

"If I cut deeper, everything will go away." She informs him blandly. She could imagine it now, lying eagle spread across the floor with red streaked over everything white in the bathroom. Her blood staining the perfectly white towels and smeared over the marble bathtub, marking her entire existence.

His expression is dark. "Nothing ever really goes away."

He helps her into a dark blue sweater that hangs off her body ridiculously and step into a pair of soft leggings. "Why?"

"I love you."

Her father's claimed that before, and it always sounded so paper thin. Her mother's told her that before, and it always sounded so damn weak.

With Tate it sounds like something indestructible and forever, like a monument.

He picks her up and carries her off to her bedroom, settling her beneath the covers. She feels like a child in his arms, his warmth spreading though her icy cold body. "The rain will stop soon, you know?"

She hums something that might be an agreement, but she isn't really listening anymore. The heavy sounds of the Ramones are playing in the air, each note drifting over her as Tate slips in behind her and drapes himself over her freezing body.


	2. Chapter 2

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_(and the scars that mark my body, they're silver and gold.)_

(Yellow Flicker Beat-Lorde)

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"How have you been?" Her father asks her quietly, his voice almost like cigarette smoke wavering in the space between them. "I've wanted to see how you were adjusting to the changes."

She tilts her head slightly at him, blissfully aware at the way he flinches at the sight of the black eye that looks impossibly black against her pale face. "Peachy." She drags the word out the way she wants to drag out a cigarette, desperately craving the feel of a white cancer stick against her lips. To feel smoke clinging to her skin. "Can I go now?"

"You've been distant, Violet. Is there anything we can do for you?" He looks so hesitant as he takes her hand, leaning forward in his seat to get closer to his wayward daughter.

She can feel Tate watching her almost. "I'm just tired, dad. My problem, not yours."

"I can help you."

She snorts, shaking her head. He believes so endlessly in his ability to fix everyone, that all it takes is his own genius touch and concern as if like magic. "I'd rather you didn't. I don't want you dissecting everything I feel, the way you do to mom. I'm not a frog that you get to cut open."

He sighs. "You haven't been going to school. Your mother is concerned, you know. I'm concerned. We just want what is best for you." His smile looks so brittle.

"If mom's so concerned, why isn't she here having this one on one with me." She rolled her eyes as she exhaled sharply. "No. She's obsessed with eating out brains and shit, all for the baby."

Her father's eyes flicker with confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Moira's cooking her organs and stuff."

There's confliction, she can see, spelled out across his face. Pursue that interesting topic or continue on solving the riddle that is Violet these days. (Has it been days, she wonders? Because it feels like an entire eternity is crushing her spine, tattooing itself across her lungs and heart. Existences are being stamped against her bare skin, leaving her tainted and ruined.)

Her father tries a new tactic. "That bruise looks nasty."

"You don't really care." She feels rage building and she welcomes the heat it brings. "You're just looking for your next fuck; because why the fuck do you care? This is your screw up family, isn't it? You don't really want to deal with this now, not when you have a new baby on the way. A baby that might not be fucked up like me."

He grabs her wrist hard, his hand hot against her sleeve. Violet flinched at the heat sinking through the fabric, pressing against the cuts on her skin. "Don't talk to me like that."

She cocks her head as she forces her eyes to go hard and voice not to waver. "You know, sometimes I think about how great it would be to hang myself. Blow my brains out. Maybe jump out from the attic."

"You don't actually mean that." He's on his feet now but so is she, already walking away from him.

"Maybe I do, maybe not."

The words sound so careless and she almost believes in them. Except, she would never want to do it like that. She wouldn't want to feel those crushing seconds moments before leaping out from the attic window, or feel the trigger right before pulling it.

She'd never want to hang herself from a noose for Tate to find.

He's waiting for her in her bedroom, eyes wide and watching her from his stomach on her bed. "How'd the chat go?"

"Dad's trying to make it seem like he's doing something." She shrugged, crossing her arms anxiously as she sinks down onto the floor. Violet wants desperately to slit her wrists and finally let go, but ever since the day Tate pulled her out of the rain her razors had gone missing. "Makes it seem like he cares or something."

"I care."

She swallows as she watches him slither off her bed and crawl towards her. "I know."

"Good. I'll always care."

He's not lying, which surprises her. People don't usually toss out casual vows like that these days and actually intend on them being honest. Tate has a habit of wearing his heart on his sleeve, she discovers. "I care about you." She doesn't look at him but she knows he is looking at her. "I want you to know that."

Violet falls a little more in love with him that day, sprawled out over her bedroom floor together with oversized mugs of earl grey tea as they flipped through Russian classics. Tate snorts sometimes in amusement, and she sinks into the blissfulness of pierced humanity stamped across each page. It takes her two hours to realize that the sky is still raining, the yard still looks like a muddy soup and she doesn't care because she feels something similar to contentedness.

Her music isn't quite so angry today, she questions. Tate flips through it idly, settling on some quiet and mournful violin music that simply flows from her speakers and fills the spaces between them. "Can it be like this forever?" She asks quietly as she rolls onto her back and looks up at the ceiling.

"I want it to be."

"Then that's good enough." Violet decides, and Tate takes her hand gently. "I want every day to be like this forever."

Tate slides closer to her, their tea mugs empty and forgotten next to the worn classics. "I used to want to be a bird and fly away. Just, leave this entire mess behind and stop being part of the living. Now, though, I never want to leave."

They're teenagers, and they're so incredibly over their heads that nothing really matters. Violet lives life on a wavering line, questioning if now is the moment that she'll actually take the plunge and finally bleed out. If her pain with tear her apart, agonizing misery eating her from the inside out.

She doesn't hurt so much anymore.

Violet kisses him hard and he doesn't hold back.


	3. Chapter 3

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_(If you knew, that I could take the pain.)_

(Special Death-Mirah)

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Thunder rumbled in the distance.

The entire house felt too large yet to small. Like she was crowded despite the empty rooms filled with tense silences that always sounded like glass breaking and guns being shot. Her mother's voice fills the hallways, angry words bitter and resentful. Her father's voice is smooth like blown glass figurines, pretty and sharp.

She's found brief solace in watching the world drown from a window seat tucked near the front of the house out of way from her parents. The sky looked heavy and low against the horizon, thick grey clouds rolling over the house.

Tate sits with her because these days he always ghosts her, his hand constantly weaving through her hair or trailing over her spine. He looks completely at ease, lips mouthing the lines to old poetry.

"They're falling apart." She states as she rests her head against the glass window. Rain drops trickle down the smooth surface and she drags her finger over the trail that they leave. "I didn't actually think they'd do this. I just thought they'd give up. Not fight and tear themselves apart over it."

"Everybody hurts for something." Tate informs her blandly as he sits himself opposite to her. "Or someone."

Violet lifts her chin up slightly. "Who do you hurt for?"

He shakes his head. "Can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Just can't." He tries to smile, but it looks to fragile.

She nudges his foot with his own. "You don't have to tell me. I was just curious." The neighbourhood looks bleak and depressing outside the window. The white picket fences look chipped and no longer so flawless and the gardens seem riddled with weeds. "Didn't that yard have a dog?" She points to the house directly across the street, a cheap doghouse sitting empty in the dirty yard.

Tate looks hard at it. "I don't remember."

Violet tries to think, but all she can remember is something that sounded distantly like a howling beast being ripped apart. The night before she had spent with her earbuds playing loud music, trying to drown out the noise of the dog wailing away.

She feels restless sitting here. Emotions constantly flaring and seizing her. She hates them, making her hands tremble and shake, her words become sharp and livid. Her thoughts felt like cigarette burns over her skin, every dream burning into her flesh for the world to see.

Tate smiles at her lazily and irritation suddenly takes control of her. "You can't keep me from my razors, you know."

"I can, actually." There's something almost like pride in his voice and it makes her feel angrier. "I've been doing a good job."

"It's not you're right."

"I don't care."

She exhales angrily before leaping off the window bench. "You're an asshole, you know that?"

"You want to kill yourself, and I'm not going to let you do that. Not here, not now. I care too much about you."

"Well, stop caring." Her words are designed to hurt him, but he barely notices them. His eyes are bright, watching her relentlessly. Violet turns away at the same moment as lightning flickers across the sky. "I'm done, Tate."

"You don't get to pick who cares and who doesn't. I'm always going to be here, Violet, and I'm always going to care."

She scowls as she storms away down to the basement, barely giving her parents a second look. The basement is dark and cold, but she finds something comforting about it. Violet loves the way the shadows twist over the floor and how the rooms seem so full despite being so emptied.

Boxes are still piled up in the corners, filled with old belongings that she doesn't really care about. She feels anxiety blossoming in her chest, warm and icy cold as it spreads through her. Violet punches a wall bitterly, crying out at the sharp pain. The skin on her knuckles split and it feels so horribly relieving.

"I hurt when you hurt. When you cut your wrist, it feels like you've cut mine." Tate tells her quietly, his voice sound tight and restrained. "I'm not going to let you die. You can't."

She doesn't bother to look at him. She's bristling at the fact that he followed her, anger sparking. "I don't care."

Tate wraps him arms tightly around her. "I do."

She tries to push herself out of his grip but he just holds her tighter. "Well, stop!"

He spins her around to look at him, his face pale with fury. "I'm never going to stop, Violet. You're mine! I'm always going to love you; I'm always going to be there." He flings his words at her sharply and she flinches. "Right now, you're angry. I get that. I'm just not going to let you die, so get over it."

"Let me go." Violet doesn't understand why she's crying. She simply is, and that pisses her off. She's sick of not being able to control these emotions. Endlessly sick over feelings switching and erupting, and she doesn't understand why she is so mad. "Get off of me."

He keeps a hold of her hand and lets her pull him deeper into the basement. "I love you, Violet. And I know you love me. Right now you're upset, but that will never change anything. I'm always going to love you."

Violet feels frantic now, needing to escape the murder house. She steps further into the shadows before she smells something completely and utterly wrong. It smells coppery and sour, making her wrinkle her nose in distaste.

She's curious, and that's why she starts pulling at a stack of cardboard boxes and examining the slight smears of blood on a few. "What is this?" She asks him quietly before dropping the box startled.

Tate only has seconds to hide before her parents come flying down the stairwell, unable to comprehend why their daughter is on her hands and knees screaming. "It's the dog!" She screams at Tate, which is silly because she knows that her father must not know Tate is hiding just around the corner. "It's the dog!" She screams again, lurching backwards from the mutilated beast.

Her mother gags at the stench, flies swarming the bloodied fur. "Get away from there!" Her father seizes her roughly, half dragging and half carrying her to the stairwell. "Get upstairs. I'll deal with this."

She trembles, crawling up the stairs with her mother following behind. Her hands ghost over Violet, trying to help her without actually touching her.

She doesn't understand how she's in her room, but suddenly she is, Tate slipping through the door quietly. "I bet you your dad did it." He tells her as he settles himself cautiously next to her. "He's been digging around in the backyard a lot, you know. I think he's melting down."

"That was disgusting." She says blankly, trying to close her eyes and not see the dog with glassy eyes and ripped out intestines. "My dad couldn't have done that."

"This house changes you. I've seen it happen. The darkness makes you into different things. It isolates you, like it does to your mother. Sometimes it makes you crack, the way your dad is." He pauses, looking at her. His black eyes glittered in the shadows of her bedroom. "Sometimes it ruins you."


	4. Chapter 4

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_(When I'm dead and gone, will they sing about me?)_

(Scream My Name-Tove Lo)

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She'll never leave, she understands.

Violet remembers those moments when she had been lurched into the kitchen, Tate carefully drawing himself closer to keep her from running. She remembers the fear clawing at her as they walked down the stairwell and into the crawlspace, her body a wreckage of death. It looked so twisted, the corpse, with fattened flies crawling over her lips and swarming her blue tinged flesh.

She also remembers, if she tries hard enough, the feel of icy water and his fingers in her mouth trying to get her to live, live, _live_.

His voice howls inside her mind some nights, tight with emotion and struggling to get her to not die. He promised, hadn't he? That he would never let her die.

He hid her razors, but she had found another way.

Violet shouldn't feel satisfied, but she does.

It's hard to process that she'll never be able to leave the murder house, and she'll always be a remaining image of the past. Sometimes she can almost see through the house, Moira bleeding into youth with dry words and planned movements and sometimes into an aged figure that stares down any threat.

She knows. Violet knows that Moira can tell that she's no longer part of the living. Sometimes she finds a mug of a soothing blend of tea sitting outside her door, and there's something that just _knows_ in her sad little smile.

Tate never leaves her anymore. There's no point in keeping up a façade, because why bother? They're both dead and they're both sad dead people.

It's still raining, but it doesn't make her skin crawl anymore. The dead animals that constantly appear in the basement no longer make her scream, so they just sit there. Rotting, the way her body is behind the wall and beneath the house.

They're together, which is all that should matter. She'll never escape the home, so why even try? Wouldn't it be better to pass decades along playing the way children play, curled up on her bed playing card games and scrabble?

"I never wanted you to find out like that." Tate tells her as he obediently passes her the cards. His face looks shadowed and hazed with guilt now, silences growing between them more and more. "I thought maybe I could make you believe in something better. That this wouldn't hurt you as much."

She accepts the two of hearts, shuffling around her hands of cards. "Do you have any threes?"

"Go fish."

Violet sighs as she takes a card from the diminishing pile, the collection of matches neatly organized around them. "They'll find the body eventually, won't they?"

Tate repositions himself on his stomach, his ankles crossed in the air. "Maybe. You never know." He cocks his brow at her. "Do you have any fives?"

She passes him her five. "If they try to leave the house?"

He doesn't look at her. "You won't be able to."

"Do you ever miss leaving?"

His lips twist into a bitter smile. "I used to. Halloween is the one day of the year when the dead can walk, you know. I used to leave the house and break as many things as I could."

"Why?"

"I wanted to leave my mark." Tate squints at his hand of cards. "It can be hard watching an entire world move on, and leave you buried in the sands of time."

Violet throws her cards down, allowing him to claim victory. "I'll always be here, you know. Even if I wasn't dead I would always want to be here with you."

Tate blinks at her before sitting up. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out an aged playing card, the corners bent slightly. "This is for you."

It's the ace of hearts and it's so worn she doesn't understand. "Are you cheating?"

He gives out a bark of a laugh. "No. This was from before everything. I used to play cards with my sister, and this was my favorite. I liked keeping it on me. Now, it's for you though. I'm always going to be your ace of hearts, as long as you'll have me."

She slips it into the pocket of her flannel shirt, feeling the worn care of the card pressed against her skin. "Well, seeing as how death won't stand in the way I guess I'm keeping you for a long time then."

Tate crawls over the cards and gives her a toothy grin. "For eternity."

The kiss is soft, but it's filled with fear and love. It takes her only a few minutes to realize that the rainstorm that had lasted for days and almost for weeks had faded into bright blue skies and the pain that she had been filled wasn't hurting her as much.

"Eternity is a long time when we're only playing go fish." She informs him with a trace of a smile.

Tate smirks at her. "I'll let you win sometimes if that'll make you feel better."


End file.
